Continent (5 page)

Then I spotted her, a woman no longer standing
back from all the mayhem I had caused (her arms crossed, her chin down, her mouth agape, waiting for a soldier). She was clamouring now amongst the women and calling out a name. Whose name I cannot say. There was too much passion, and too much noise, and I am far too distant from the gate.

H
OW HAD
they reacted, these people, when the young teacher came to the valley, earnest and eager? Old Loti brought him down to the village on horseback on his second day and took him round to shake grave hands at the mayor’s house and informal ones at the village store. People smiled at him smiling and waited until they got to know his particular ways before they showed any warmth to the newcomer, the ‘volunteer’ from Canada. His pupils due back at school within a week, kept away but watched. The men who had met foreigners before, while working in the mines or in the markets and warehouses of the city, stayed close but silent. Those that shook his hand saw that his horse did not like him and that he sat awkwardly on it and pulled too closely on the reins. The horse was reserving judgement, looking for something to trust, and so would they. Horses knew a lot. Did not the white horse escape the flood which drowned the shepherdess?

They did not see him on a horse again, though all
the young men of the mountains rode horses, for on the fourth day, at dusk, Eddy Rivette took his shorts and running shoes from their bag and set off at a soft pace across the compound of the school. He tested the ground and the stones and the thorns until he was sure of them, and then, lengthening his step, turned to the steep ridge which separated his half-valley from that of the village and the store. Alone on the tracks worn by animals and borrowed by men, he encountered everything which he had expected: sunset, warm earth, a sense of liberation amongst a landscape and a people equally dispossessed. He picked his way, running all the time but choosing, heading for landmarks and favouring distance to the hard work of gradients. By the time he was in sight of the store and was surprising those who sat outside, Eddy Rivette had followed for the first time the track which he was to run every day for the fifteen months he stayed in the hills.

‘What’s that teacher doing, running half-dressed across the hard ground of the hills?’

Old Loti could not give the answer. Men walked or rode in the village but perhaps in Canada they ran in white shorts. He did not know.

‘Perhaps in Canada they don’t have horses,’ he said, and the men nodded that this was so because they remembered how the teacher had sat on his horse two days before.

‘Children run,’ said the storekeeper. ‘They run just for the pleasure of it.’

‘Yes, but not alone,’ said Loti. ‘And anyway, watch him. He doesn’t run like a child. He runs as if he has some purpose … but without any urgency. That’s Canada for you.’

But they got used to it and after a while began to look forward to it, like anything reliable and harmless. Within an hour of the children from the school slowly picking their way down the hillside towards the village at the end of their day, the slim, tense figure of their teacher would appear briefly at the summit of the ridge above the village, disappear into the slip of an erosion gulley and then come in view again lower down the hill where the track was quite flat. There, the teacher came forward on his toes, head down and fists clenched, and ran the last two hundred metres in a sprint, not slowing and stopping until he had passed the smiles and grins of the men who sat at the store. Then he turned, cool and with breath to spare, and smiled himself and said hello to all who had been watching.

He got to be quite famous. But fame is something different from popularity. It is less demanding for a start and has more to do with talent than virtue. But not even much to do with talent. The fame which Eddy Rivette enjoyed was just that of someone behaving strangely but purposefully in a place where
there were enough old men with the leisure to watch. When they smiled and clapped at his daily approach at the store it was not with affection or welcome but at what he was providing for their day If they had genuinely known and liked him, the running would have embarrassed them. It was strange. It was quirky. It separated them from him. Not to be wished of a friend.

’Isra-kone, however,
was
a friend of the village. He was a young man, uneducated in school ways but knowing and intelligent and, best of all, a fine talker and a great horseman. These two things mattered to the men of the village who were too old to be judged by the recent talents which were taught at the school. ’Isra was one of the last initiates of the valley, having spent twelve days, two of them drugged unconscious, at the circumcision lodge in the mountains. He knew the secret songs in the old Siddilic, drummed endlessly at him and his fellows at the lodge. They had repeated the words, their stomachs pressed to the walls to ease the pains of hunger. After ’Isra’s lodge the old mayor had died and the new mayor, old Loti’s brother, discontinued circumcision of the young villagers and the lodges and the secret alliances which sprang from them, not because he was modern but because he feared the new directives of the government officers in the city
more than he feared the criticism of the old gossips in the village.

And so ’Isra and the young poor men of his age were the last ‘brotherhood’ and the old gossips whom the mayor didn’t fear put their hopes on them. It was foolish, for the younger, uncircumcised brothers and sons of the ‘brotherhood’ were better for the village. They read and wrote and spoke English with the runner at the school as if it were their own language. But still the old men preferred ’Isra and his friends. And secretly they mistrusted the ponderous troupe of pupils who left with their pens and books for the school at eight each day.

Of the brotherhood ’Isra was their favourite, more popular than their own mayor’s son who had gone away to colleges in England and Italy and got new wild ideas. They didn’t need much excuse to like ’Isra. He was so easy. But when they retold how he had ridden his white mare that night of the rains across the hills to bring help for the mayor’s chest, where his heart was beating and flapping like a trapped bird, they found all the excuse to like him thoroughly. The helicopter had come from the town on to the flat edge of the village and taken the mayor away to hospital. Four foreign doctors had slaved to quiet his heart and keep the mayorship with this old fearful man and away from the wild ideas of his wild college son. And ’Isra
had returned to tell of his ride and that the chief would be well. Even the smallest children will say it. ’Isra-kone is the finest horseman in the valley.

’Isra was a quiet man, though a great talker when he chose, who had few certainties. He did not trust the weather or his cattle or the life of his horse whom he loved. When the weather was fine and his stock was healthy and he woke in the morning to find the horse bright-eyed and vigorous, then he let himself enjoy that day. But he did not expect it to hold for the next day. He expected only what he could see approaching with his own eye, and (since the night darkness blocked his vision) his anticipations ended each day at sunset.

He had known, since the first swollen stomach of his boyhood, what it was to sit watchful at night beneath the stars. That was the extent of his mysticism. For the rest, he was happy while he had maize and fulfilled while he was popular in the village. In the two years since his ride across the mountains to bring the helicopter, he
had
allowed a small certainty into his life, that his comings and goings were commented on. That as he rode down from the lands the old men at the store nodded and smiled with affection and said, ‘There’s young ’Isra with his horse. What’s he up to?’ and called, ‘Go well, ’Isra. Where are you riding?’ Or, ‘From where are you come?’

When the old men stopped calling and nodding and commenting they did not like him any less. It was just that their interests were elsewhere, fixed a little to the right of the wide erosion gulley on the ridge above the village where the teacher appeared each evening for an instant before disappearing and appearing again, jogging doggedly towards them and their gossip at the store.

’Isra watched his rival with the old men for a season until his own fame had eroded away and not even the men of his brotherhood turned to admire him and his white mare or whisper his name. Their eyes were not for one of their own whom they loved and trusted and understood but for the foreigner for whom they cared nothing, but who came faster and faster each day from the ridge below the sunset and who seemed to tell them something about man and their mountains which they had never guessed – that men were like hares who could bounce across the black-studded basalt earth around which they had stumbled for centuries until the horse had come.

’Isra missed his fame for a season until he saw how he and his horse could regain it, bringing the attention of the villagers once again back to his entries and exits and his fine horsemanship and storytelling. Not planning ahead further than that day, ’Isra timed the meeting with his rival for the evening.

He told old Loti. ‘Me and the teacher are going to race tonight from the school to the store. Will you be there? Don’t let anybody miss the race.’

Neither he nor old Loti nor the other gossips at the store doubted for an instant that ’Isra and his mare would beat the teacher. The horse was born to the mountains. But they looked forward to the contest. It would be interesting to see what the foreigner and his bony legs could do against the mountain and the horse.

The word soon spread through the village that ’Isra would race the teacher. But the last man to hear was the teacher himself. It was Sunday and the school was closed. He sat at the door of his house and ran his fingers across the ripple soles of his shoes. Still good. Good perhaps for another month or so … and then it wouldn’t matter. His ‘term’ would be over and he would be back in Canada and running on track again. He’d need harder soles there. These ripples were good for the dry sloping hills which surrounded the school, for turning sharply on the thorny goat-ways and the rubble of the yearly erosion – but not for ‘track’. Another month or so … and he’d have needed new running shoes, the thatch on the staff house would have to be replaced, new boys would be coming to the school. And he’d be in Montreal with his colour slides and a lifelong commitment to this seventh and shabby continent, to the village in the
next valley. Melvyn John Murphy was coming. His replacement. From Detroit, Michigan – motor city. He’d already written to the American and told him about the place, the school, the trick the sunlight had of flecking the aloes long after the light in the valleys had gone. He hoped that Melvyn John Murphy would respect the place like he had, would give what he had (though not quite as much) and take what was offered. They had their own ways, these people. Brashness would not be welcome.

He thought all this and decided that he would miss his running across the hills into the village. He decided, too, that he would preserve his sense of loss, even when his memory was faint and when his body and pace had got used once again to the flat white-lined cinder tracks and the soft spring-time training runs across the campus of Joliette College and along the lip of the river where girls sat with their bicycles on the grass. Somehow it was more noble and more worldly amongst the slipping soils and half-chewed thorns to pad pad pad along, nearly always dry, nearly always warm, always alone and with no competition, no other runners but yourself to run against.

He would preserve the loss of that.

The wind was dropping now as it did the hour before dusk. He pulled the ripples on and tied them tight and double so they would not loosen or snag on the low dry bushes. He turned his socks close down
over his shoes so that his shins were exposed and could be cut on the sharp twigs and coarse grass of the track. It was good to scratch and draw blood in that safe place.

When he stood he saw ’Isra-kone standing next to his tough white mare at the edge of the school compound. Eddy Rivette walked over and greeted his visitor.

‘Did you come to see me?’

’Isra nodded.

‘What is it? To do with the school?’

‘No, running. I want to race with you to the store.’

Eddy Rivette was half-pleased. It was good that one of the villagers should want to run with him, but this man was not dressed for running nor built for it. It was strange, that – for the man’s decision to come to him at the school seemed firm and old but his appearance was that of a man who wanted to run on impulse, whatever he wore and despite his build.

‘I go fast,’ said Eddy discouragingly

‘My horse goes faster!’

‘Your horse? You want to race me on your horse? Not running?’

‘No, riding on my horse!’

They both laughed at the thought of ’Isra running. This was to be more of a contest because ’Isra was a fine rider and his horse was strong and used to the hills and the ways across them.

‘Why do you want to run against me? Must the loser give something?’

‘No,’ said ’Isra. ‘It is for the race only.’

‘Okay. When?’ asked Eddy.

‘Now,’ said ’Isra.

A
ND THAT WAS
how the Great Race between the schoolteacher and the horseman began – a simple challenge brought to the school compound by a small uneasy man with a horse to another small man, a runner from Canada. Not a brother. Not a man from the villages amongst the hills, but a stranger with a stranger’s ways. ‘When?’ asked the one. ‘Now,’ answered the other. And so the race waited a few moments to begin, for the two men to understand the race, that it was two different strengths that were being matched.

‘When you kick your horse I will start running,’ said Eddy Rivette. ’Isra nodded. ‘It’s the first to the store, is that it?’ ’Isra nodded again. ‘We can go any way we want, just get there first?’

‘That’s right,’ said ’Isra.

‘Let’s go then!’

’Isra kicked his horse and turned the rein towards the foot of the steep ridge which stood between him and the crowd of villagers, his villagers, who waited at the ground by the store. The horse speeded from a trot to a canter and cut firmly and confidently into the
slow gradient away from the school. Eddy Rivette set off in pursuit, surprised at the speed with which the horse was gaining ground. He saw ’Isra choose the same cattle track which he himself had used nightly for visits to the store. ’Isra had been watching him, he realized. Any advantage that Eddy had from knowing the most economical route across the ridge was lost now that ’Isra had chosen it for himself. It would be impossible to pass, too, on that track. It was too narrow and its borders too treacherous for the delicate ankles of a man. Used to adapting his tactics to the dictates of the pack in the point-to-points and marathons that he had run in Canada, Eddy Rivette saw that the race was lost by his usual route. The horse had the advantage of speed on the flat and the advantage of being first and unpassable on the steep track. He would not be able to pass ’Isra until they reached the gentle gradient at the tree before the store and, by then, the horse’s speed would make her the winner. He had to beat them on the hill or lose the race.